Chapter Six #6
The arrival of honoured guests from the far-off capital was easily the most exciting thing to have happened in several years.
Sir Rudyard had spent the whole morning combing his moustaches and overseeing the polishing of his armour; the various guards and sentries were on their best and most sober behaviour, the castle walls had been whitewashed, the courtyard swept, the banners cleaned (and, regrettably, starched until they were stiff as boards, and gave the impression that the castle was being buffeted by constant gale-force winds).
In a moment of wild generosity – brought on, some suggested, by the recent birth of Ysilde’s child – Mistress Clove told all the kitchen staff they could take a few minutes to go up and gawk at the newcomers.
Bait lingered on the stair, suspicious, but Neb dragged her out into the courtyard.
The most important dignitaries clustered around the main gate, so they could greet the visitors when they arrived.
Others of lesser import clustered on the west-facing battlements, or on the steps of the keep.
The scullions, pages, stablehands and other servants clambered up on whatever rooftop or raised platform they could find.
Bait and Neb joined them, climbing up onto the roof of the chapel.
They joined a crowd of onlookers eager for the first glimpse of riders on the road.
This first glimpse was disappointing. Instead of knights out of some story, with bright shields and polished armour, the king’s emissaries seemed little different from the keep’s regular guards.
But spend even a few moments in the company of these warriors, and you sensed there was something different about them.
They were fighting men, veterans of a hundred battlefields.
Few of the border guards have ever thrust their spearpoint into anything other than the straw-stuffed guts of a training dummy, but these adventurers had spilled entrails of all kinds in far-off lands.
And now they were here.
In the middle of the company, a jewel in a case of steel, rode a woman who bore no weapon.
Bait had only a hazy idea about royal messengers and courts and palaces, but this woman, who wore a brilliant blue travelling cloak and had a great book strapped to her saddle seemed more courtly than the rest.
“I want a better view,” she whispered to Neb.
This would prove to be a terrible mistake.
*
Up Bait climbed, squeezing through a narrow gap between buttresses and then scuttling up the wall of the keep like a lizard.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Sir Rudyard greet the visitors, bowing low, introducing all his servants, making all the proper courtesies which were quite lost on these adventurers.
Fighting men have no time for speeches, but could smell the feast.
She climbed and the courtyard shrank beneath her, and the sky breathed on her face and the western lands were like a jewel laid out under the setting sun.
Then she heard a noise. The cry of a beast.
Neb could have told her what it was. So could anyone in the castle, anyone in the village, anyone in the wide lands of men.
But it was new to Bait. What monster was it that had infiltrated the castle and crept past all the walls and guards, and now laired in one of the upper rooms?
The monster’s cry was a truncated gasp, as if yowling through mucus, and it sawed at Bait’s nerves.
Curious and horrified, she approached the window.
Inside – a cradle. The serving girl Ysilde’s newborn.
The child was bait.
Offa’s hand shot out, grabbing Bait by the wrist. He hauled her into the room. Behind him stood Mistress Clove, who pointed an accusatory fingernail at Bait. “I told ’em, didn’t I tell ’em? Changeling! Come to steal the baby’s breath! Changeling!”
Offa flung Bait to the ground and brandished his knife.
Bait scrambled away and darted for the door.
She ran, and Offa ran after her, roaring like an ogre, clumsy as a troll, murderous as a manticore.
The Dungeon was not so far from the surface in that moment.
In her terror, I wonder if Bait imagined the minotaur suddenly, impossibly, smashing through the castle wall, to pit Sir Peledon’s battle axe against Offa’s knife.
Instead, she ran headlong into Sir Rudyard and the newcomers outside the door of the great hall. One of the adventurers grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and slammed her against the wall in the way that a dog might deal with a rat, stunning her.
Sir Rudyard boggled at the sight of his cook and the baker’s boy chasing a serving girl with clearly violent intent.
He’d just been boasting to the honoured guests about how he’d imposed discipline and order on the keep through diligent effort, and now all that crumbled.
He tried to speak, but could not find the words.
“What’s going on here?” hissed the adventurer. There was a dagger in his hand, too, quicker and sharper than Offa’s. “Thief, is she?”
“Worse – changeling!” insisted Mistress Clove. “I told you not to take her in, my lord. She’s a thing from the darkest depths.”
Bait tried at this point to argue that she hailed from the upper levels, not the darkest depths, but a soft hand touched her lips to silence her.
“If the child is a changeling,” said the blue-cloaked woman, “then she belongs to me.”